I know through the entire dragonflight expansion, going all in on PoM (all the right side talents) and casting it on CD was the way to go, but it seems like its now only like 5th or 6th on our heals even taking like seven talents to support it.
Is it worth considering dropping some of the PoM talents now?
The question is for what?
The only talents you could substitute for them are PoH talents, which are functionally worthless.
It’s almost certainly far too efficient to shortchange it like that.
It was already only like 15%-20% overhealing max in DF, in many top logs now it’s more like <5% overhealing.
If you shift those points into talents that have 8-10x the overhealing you’re not likely to get more effective HPS, just more overhealing. You’d need to invest them in talents that offered similar throughput vs. efficiency value to come out ahead, and I don’t think you can find that.
True. Could swap out Divine Service and Benediction into getting both Crisis Management and Prismatic Echoes, but I’m not sure it’d be an actual HPS gain.
It’s just annoying that something we put like seven talent points into isn’t better.
I’m not sure PoM overhealing is as low as thought. I mean, it’s low but not non-zero, right? If stacks just… fall off due to expiring, it’s functionally overhealing but just doesn’t show in the combat log as such?
The hps contribution of Divine Service and Benediction is shockingly little if you aren’t running Circle of Healing with Healing Chorus.
There are already holy priests that drop both in favour of Prismatic Echoes, and frankly the hps is about the same.
Well that’s a little definitional sleight of hand for you - Prayer of Mending is a buff, not a heal (until triggered of course) so wasted stocks are simply buffs that expire, not heals that overheal. It can only actually overheal when the buff is consumed. Regardless, given the spell’s range, long sit time and smart healing injured players you’re going to get value out of it in any realistic fight.
I can see an argument for cutting Benediction given the state of renew, but then you lose Divine Service and its synergy with Prayers of the Virtuous.
If I was going to kick one of the PoM talents to the curb, how about Say Your Prayers? PoM already has plenty of charges, and the 15% proc chance makes it less reliable, throwing that point towards Crisis Management or Desperate Times I can see being reasonable?
If you are only using Prayer of Mending to proc Answered Prayers(which is more or less the purpose of PoM in the current state of Holy Priest), then Say Your Prayers has more value than Divine Service.
At least SYP has a chance to give you more stacks of AP, but Divine Service only increases the healing of PoM.
The current healing-per-cast of PoM is markedly lower than Heal, I might add. Heal is currently 1.3-1.5 million, and PoM is maybe about 900k if you take every single talent that buffs it.
That seems a little extreme to reduce PoM to just proccing Apotheosis when it’s still a top-5 heal. And remember, it’s not like you’re swapping these talents out for something that’s going to buff Halo.
I could be resistant because it feels a bit wrong to sideline an iconic spell - sort of like downgrading Healing Stream/Cloud Stream totem in the shaman kit. I’d still watch out that you don’t just end up buffing your strong single target spells even further and end up just overhealing for more on them.
Prismatic Echoes does buff Halo though…
Divine Service and Benediction only buffs Prayer of Mending(and Circle of Healing if you are still taking Healing Chorus), but Prismatic Echoes buffs every single spell except Renew…
Oh well, I was assuming Prismatic Echoes was a given, but I would’ve taken those points from the left side of the tree (PoH/CoH supporting talents).
You would have to give up Crisis Management, Prayers of the Virtuous or Say Your Prayers if you want to still take Divine Service and Benediction.
And the reason for that is you are forced to take 2 “dead” talents in Afterlife and Chastise, so you only get 2 extra points out of the 4 you would have saved.
While I agree Divine Service isn’t a great talent (never has been, really).
IDK what you’d even put the benediction point into. If you skip DS you still end up with 2/2 of all of these if you aren’t going the CoH route (and CoH is a similarly low HPS button). If you try to skip both bene and DS, you’re left with extra points to put… somewhere. Especially because Bene gates enlightenment.
And if you aren’t running Benediction you’d never take the CoH healing chorus route because when will you have renew ticking? CoH just wouldn’t be worth casting over another heal.
The Holy tree is bloated with filler talents and not a lot of actual choices.
You have 3 talents for dps: Chastise, Empyreal Blaze, and Burning Vehemence. This should be trimmed down to 2.
Then you have 3 talents dedicated to PoH and CoH. You’re also forced to take PoH if you want CoH even if you never put that on your hotbar.
Then you have Cosmic Ripple and Everlasting Light which are required picks to take Trail of Light or Crisis Maangement. These are 2 points thrown out the window.
Then you got all these PoM talents which mainly exist as filler because there’s nothing else to put points in. Divine Service and Say your Prayers could easily be removed. They’d just have to give PoM a +10% healing increase and a baseline +1 stack.
The bottom of the tree is really where everything stinks. It’s 2 points for everything and it’s impossible to get talents like Pontifex/Resonant Words without giving up better options. Talents like Answered Prayers and Miracle Worker are mandatory picks.
Voice of Harmony, Answered Prayers, Resonant Words,and Epiphany should be 1 point. Divine Image should get the Miracle Worker treatment and be moved up higher.
Then you get the end of the tree with only 3 end tree talents when most classes get 5.
Renewed Faith gates Enlightenment, not Benediction. As an aside, Renewed Faith also gates Benediction.
As a reference of what I run in raid:
https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/priest/holy/DAAAOVRAFQFQVKlUoBQBEAA
Last point is a flex pick between Pontifex and Desperate Times, depending on fight-to-fight.
That’s what I use on my priest, though I take the points from Pontifex (which loses value since we’re ditching CoH) and Say Your Prayers (hate random procs, especially such a weak one) and put them into Desperate Times, which is worth more since people spend much more time sub 50% and that’s when healing matters most anyway.
(Also Enlightenment/Renewed Faith aren’t doing a lot with our mana efficiency and without Bene for any free renews) so you can shift those into the DPS talents or Bene/Divine Service based on the content.
I think given how often we are spamming Flash Heal and Heal it doesn’t really matter if we don’t have CoH proccing Pontifex, you will have 5 stacks of Pontifex for almost every holy word unless you are under Apotheosis from Answered Prayers.
SYP is only there because it still helps with getting stacks for Answered Prayers, and not much else.
I wouldn’t cast PoM at all if it weren’t for the fact we are essentially forced to take Answered Prayers to access Divine Image, and the other gate being Voice of Harmony losing most of its value with CoH falling out of meta.
It’s marginal, but it’s a bit like, say, Earthen Wall Totem - it’s not usually going to be the difference but it usually adds up. With most of the talents it’s still that top 5 heal and just tossing it overboard (after already throwing CoH out the window) actually makes hpriest’s AoE healing profile a bit too fragile for my taste (to each their own!), at that point you’re leaning entirely on Halo and raid CDs.
Oh I still cast it on cd, I just convince myself every PoM cast is worth ~1 extra holy word.
I have, however, seen quite a few top 3 parses where the holy priests managed to do disgusting levels of healing while basically not casting PoM at all. They essentially forego casting the spell entirely.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/VZat3Hv4PmTgwdNq#fight=37&type=casts&source=19
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/rXt7K4jVR3ck8vdW#fight=28&type=casts&source=1&translate=true
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/ZHPDXFrA1vVNL8z3#fight=3&type=casts&source=5
The fact that all of these can be possible is because PoM simply heals way too little per cast. If you could cast PoM, you can cast a Flash Heal or a Heal with that same execution time.
There’s five end tree talents on just three nodes.
For raids, I’m not sure anything is better. The main thing that matters in raids is HPS. For mythic+? I would take POH and circle of healing talents. I’ve tried both, and POH with the proper buff setup is perfect for those times when Halo is down, and can keep the team up from the AOE blast and out of danger territory.
The key of course is to use it while the AOE is happening, stop after 3-4 casts, then go back to single target healing.